Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • Steven universe: vCJD edition chapter 3/ Enrtry for side C of vCJD

  • Dr. Wagner Jr. vs. LA Park (Todo x El Todo - 05/11/2013)

    Words are pretty damn stupid, y'know? I would know. Years of speaking and writing the language and I still don't understand a damn thing, you'd think I'd know about grammar and putting thoughts down for writing this review.

    I've got a lot to say, but it just don't come out like that! With this match, it ain't supposed to come out like that!

  • Katsuyori Shibata vs. Kazuchika Okada

    For about half a decade at this point, specifically since February 21st, 2020, I have obsessively rewatched, to a tee, at least every few months, the purowave Shibata MV which is unlisted on YouTube. The entire second half is this match. To continue on something that feels unserious as a mood lightener as well, if somebody can find me the iLikeJason stuff from this match where he syncs some hits to It's the Hard Knock Life from Annie. Or even iLikeJason re-uploads in general. This is something I still remember specifically from eight years ago. That'd be greatly appreciated.

• Politics/Laws

  • why are librarians pro-IP?

    What's sticking for me today is this: Libraries and librarians are committed to protecting freedom of access to the information we collect, catalog, and provide. Yet librarians also tend to staunchly defend copyright, both as a broad concept and in particular instances.

    "Generative AI violates copyright by plagiarizing what it scrapes from the Internet" is a prime example. Of all the arguments about AI I've seen go by on various librarian listservs in the past six months, this one has the most staying power among members of the profession. Similarly, when Trump won in November 2024 and librarians got bombarded by folks panic-ordering us to make digital copies of all the "banned books" before the administration burns them, librarians in those Reddit threads and other social media conversations tended to fall back on "that's a violation of copyright."

• Technology and Free Software

  • Better compression systems ?

    I have been reading about alternative compression systems. It seems there are some interesting theories and implementations that would be fun to play with. Will research more.

  • Calculators and spreadsheets

    I stumbled upon a discussion about the Gnome Calculator. Apparently it stopped working for some people because a bank blocked it from retrieving the exchange rates it needs to allow users to do currency conversions. I get it. It's a feature, it needs data that's up to date, so you need to fetch it. The default is to do this once a week, I hear.

    Based on currency-provider.vala, the currency providers are the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Central Bank.

  • Internet/Gemini

    • Returning to a Human Internet

      Ok, let's stop here for a second. This looks like a good start to me, but some of you may ask: are you sure you're not exaggerating? Is this really that much of an issue or you're dramatizing the whole thing? After all, content creation today is easier than it's ever been, and reaching others is just a click/swipe/like away.

      One could even argue that mainstream social media platforms (X, TikTok, Instagram, etc.) are actually very useful tools that provide anyone the chance to be heard, to show themselves and interact with the whole world, in a very much democratic way.